endentalism is too thin.

Take as an example this much-admired passage from St. James:

Pure religion and undefiled is this before God and the Father,
to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and
to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

The widows and the fatherless are our brothers and sisters and our flesh
and blood, and should be at home in our hearts and on our hearths. And
who that is a man will work to keep himself unspotted from the world if
the service of the world needs him to expose his flesh and his soul to
risk?

I can fancy a Reverend Gentleman going to Heaven, unspotted from the
world, to face the awful eyes of a Heavenly Father whose gaze has been
on London.

A good man mixes with the world in the rough-and-tumble, and takes his
share of the dangers, and the falls, and the temptations. His duty is
to work and to help, and not to shirk and keep his hands white. His
business is not to be holy, but to be useful.

In such a world as this, friend Christian, a man has no business reading
the Bible, singing hymns, and attending divine worship. He has not
_time_. All the strength and pluck and wit he possesses are needed in
the work of real religion, of real salvation. The rest is all "dreams
out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight."

There ought to be no such thing as poverty in the world. The earth is
bounteous: the ingenuity of man is great. He who defends the claims of
the individual, or of a class, against the rights of the human race is a
criminal.

A hungry man, an idle man, an ignorant man, a destitute or degraded
woman, a beggar or pauper child is a reproach to Society and a witness
against existing religion and civilisation.

War is a crime and a horror. No man is doing his duty when he is not
trying his best to abolish war.

I have been asked why I "interfered in things beyond my sphere," and why
I made "an unprovoked attack" upon religion. I am trying to explain. My
position is as follows:

Rightly or wrongly, I am a Democrat. Rightly or wrongly, I am for the
rights of the masses as against the privileges of the classes. Rightly
or wrongly, I am opposed to Godship, Kingship, Lordship, Priestship.
Rightly or wrongly, I am opposed to Imperialism, Militarism, and
Conquest. Rightly or wrongly, I am for universal brotherhood and
universal freedom. Rightly or wrongly, I am for union against disunion,
for collective ownership against private ownership.